Hatred, Dear Watson, Is Completely Justified
by elementarydarling
Summary: In the aftermath of Sherlock's death, John Watson struggles to carry on his life without his best friend. Post-Reichenbach, John/Sherlock.


_**A/N:**__ So here lies the foundation of my first Sherlock multi-chapter. Yay!_

_I doubt it will be very long, but who can really tell with these things? I'm hoping to put my own spin on the aftermath of Reichenbach, how John deals with it all and if he'll ever be able to get on with his life without Sherlock in it. There will be drinking, women, - well more like woman, really – copious amounts of angst and maybe a happy Sherlock return, maybe a depressing Sherlock return? I haven't decided yet. _

_As of now I have a general idea where I want to go with this and *so far* all is going well, so, fingers crossed._

_As always, the characters belong to ACD and Mofftiss, I'm merely playing with them._

_Enjoy._

* * *

><p>Sometimes, quite frequently to be honest, John Watson had thought that he hated Sherlock Holmes.<p>

He hated his near-constant arrogance, his superiority complex (which, to be fair, was quite permitted really), his laziness, or rather, his belief that certain things were unimportant - such as texting and making tea and cleaning up his messes - his general lack of respect or tact when dealing with people, his disdain for the speed of the average human brain (which John possessed, unfortunately); the list is quite literally endless.

However, John Watson had been wrong. In all those times he'd muttered words of hate or had thoughts of anger at Sherlock's traits, why the feeling had been nothing, nothing at all compared to the hatred that filled his entire body when Sherlock Holmes plummeted to his death off of the roof of St. Bart's.

John had watched his best friend's body cutting through the air; his arms and legs had been flailing, coat billowing up like a tragic parody of the hero John had always believed him to be, and in seconds his body had smacked against the pavement.

And as the crack of bones echoed through the suddenly silent street, John had felt true hatred burst free within his chest and the sharp, metallic tang of it spew into his mouth.

He _hated_ Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

><p>Months later, John is sat in his chair, union jack pillow clutched to his aching chest, eyes fixed on the opposite chair. It is void of its owner and John thinks that it looks melancholic; like it is grieving its former occupant. Its arms are sagged, once shiny metal legs now dull and lifeless. It's a fairly good metaphor for John himself, really.<p>

Isn't he too, sagged and dull?

_Yes_, he thinks. _Dull and empty, yet filled to the brim with hatred._

He throws the cushion furiously into the fireplace, watches it catch fire then disintegrate and stands from his chair. Straightening out his frumpy jumper, he heads for the kitchen. During the first three months without Sher- without _him,_ John had exterminated the entire flat of the mad-man's experiments; he'd initiated it in a rather unorthodox manner too, swiping his arm furiously across the kitchen table and watching vials and beakers galore go smashing around him, liquids of blues and reds and yellows staining his clothes and shoes and walls and kitchen tiles. It had made him feel better for a second or two, curbed the hatred in his belly for a second longer and then came back with a burning intensity that had John clutching the last surviving beaker and sobbing on the kitchen floor. After that, John resigned himself to letting go of _him_ slowly; letting tiny parts of his best friend slip through the cracks of 221B, piece by piece. It was supposed to be healthy to let them go slowly, but that too, had proven much harder than John had anticipated and after just a few weeks he'd stopped throwing out designer suits and shiny shoes. Instead, anything that he found - like that damn skull which Mrs Hudson had hidden under John's own bed - he hoarded all to himself. The remnants of the world's only consulting detective can now be found spilling out of every empty space of John's bedroom.

Today, John feels the hatred more fiercely than usual - for no particular reason, mind, John just has his bad days – and so he finds himself scouring the kitchen cupboards for something, anything that will destroy that stupid _desolate_ looking chair.

He finds the emergency cricket bat wedged behind the fridge.

It does the job fine.

* * *

><p>"John, you have to." Ella prompts gently.<p>

Her voice is calm and soft and John hates it. She's trying to make him talk; for the most part of this session she's been getting him to spill about his feelings, skirting around the big issue, but now she's asking him to talk about- well, about his former flat-mate. More specifically she's trying to get him to speak his name and John just _can't_. Six months on and John still feels like saying his name will be an admission that he's dead, like if he allows himself to grieve his death and admit he's dead, then there'll be no hope of him ever coming back.

In his mind he treats it like an unspoken agreement between the genius and himself; as long as he doesn't say his name, doesn't even think it, then he isn't _really __gone__._

Ella is persistent, however, and she's baiting John with all the snippets of information John's told her previously, about his former life with his genius flatmate. At first its ok, he can take her talking about him running around at ungodly hours, chasing after mad-men with another mad-man at his side, he can take the memories flooding back and he can take the contrasting feelings of warmth and raw hatred and abandonment that comes with them. You see, that's not his problem. He has no difficulty remembering all the times he spent with him; he just can't _talk_ about them. He wants to keep them all to himself and never let them out. Because it's all he has left of him really, the memories and the new found hatred. It's all he really feels anymore.

"What if it's true, what if he was a fake, John? I think you need to consider the possibility that this anger you're feeling towards Sherlock," a wince on John's part, "could stem from the belief that he lied to you for two years."

Her words feel like a punch to the gut and John recoils back into his chair, anger bubbling furiously inside of him. He clenches his fists and his jaw, mentally screaming at himself to calm down before he does something he will really regret.

_How fucking dare she._

"You know absolutely nothing about my feelings and where they _stem from,"_ the last two words he spits violently at her but, to her credit, she doesn't even flinch. His face a mask of sheer anger as he carries on, rising from his chair, "Sherlock Holmes was a bloody _brilliant_ man, the best one I ever knew and nothing and no-one will ever convince me that he lied to me."

He strides furiously to the door, leaning on his cane heavily. Before he slams the door he looks over his shoulder and catches a glimpse of his therapist. Ella smiles triumphantly from her place opposite his now empty chair.

He's halfway home, anger somewhat subdued, before he realises that he had said Sherlock's name out loud.

* * *

><p>Some six weeks after he first said Sherlock's name, John's face is being peeled from the sticky surface of a pub table by two very delicate, slender hands. Mary.<p>

Mary Morstan has been working in John's local for the past few months, John knows this because, shortly after his explosive therapist session, Lestrade had shown up at Baker Street, hauled John up out of his chair and dragged him to the pub as a way to unwind and has been doing so every week since. That first night hadn't gone well, John had ended up getting in a rather scathing brawl with a man who John had heard saying loudly to his mates: 'if you ask me, it's good riddance to that Holmes bloke'. John had slammed his fist into the man's nose on pure instinct and the pain in his knuckles afterwards had reminded him of the time he punched a chief superintendent in Sherlock's name.

The fight hadn't put Lestrade off his efforts to get John back to a normally functioning human being though; he turns up now every Wednesday and forces John to trudge along after him to the pub.

The first time John'd clapped eyes on Mary Morstan though, had been on the third week of his pub visits with Lestrade. She'd been pulling pints and, up until that point, John had always hung back at the table in the furthest corner while Greg went to get the round in, so he'd never had the opportunity to notice her before. That night, though, Lestrade had patted him on the shoulder and told him to get the drinks in while he went to the loo.

Feeling like he owed his friend for all the effort he was putting in for John's benefit, he'd gone up to the bar.

At first he didn't even glance at her, he was too wrapped up in thoughts of Sherlock and what he would say if he could see John now, floating through his life like a shadow. He was wondering if Sherlock would feel touched that he couldn't find it in himself to function properly without the self-proclaimed sociopath, then shook his head - _no he'd think I was stupid and ordinary and dull, he wouldn't understand_, he thought bitterly. The hatred had swelled, the image of a dark figure hurtling to the ground dancing in front of his eyes.

"You look like you're thinking rather hard about something there, Doctor."

Her sweet voice wormed its way through the darkness that shrouded John's thoughts and he looked up at her. Her face was warm and openly friendly and she looked genuinely concerned for him.

"Its John, right? John Watson?" he nodded, not having the faintest idea how she knew that. It must have shown on his face because she continued. "Sarah's told me all about you. Plus I see you in the surgery from time to time, well, I used to before I stopped working there. I worked on reception."

John started playing idly with a soggy drinks mat on the bar in front of him, feeling uncomfortable. He didn't want to correct her assumption that he still worked there, it would lead to questions he wouldn't want to answer. Hopefully she'd seen it all on the news on read about it in the papers.

"Anyway, Dr Watson, what can I get you?" She placed a tiny hand on his own, stilling them and he smiled at her, a small smile, but a genuine one nonetheless.

"Two pints of bitter, please."

"Tell you what, I get off in five, how about you go back to your table," she said motioning over to where Lestrade was now sat waiting for him, "and I'll bring them over, join you for a drink?"

He nodded yes, another genuine smile making a rare appearance.

The months following that night Mary and John had become quite good friends. They weren't dating, no nothing of the sort really, but she was a fresh face in his life; someone who he didn't associate with Sherlock and his life before his friend's death and so it was surprisingly easy to talk to her and not get caught up in the feelings of loss and hatred that seemed to permanently reside in his chest.

Today had been a bad day, however. Exactly a year after Sherlock's suicide, John had woken up at the crack of dawn, his mind refusing to give him a rest from that image of Sherlock _falling, falling, falling_. He paced about his room for hours and hours, talking bitterly out loud to a Sherlock that was no longer there to hear him as emotions fought within him. His hate for the fact that Sherlock took his own life, took himself away from John, eventually won out and swarmed throughout his body. When the clock hit four and the evening darkness began to settle over the sky, John had found himself knocking back pint after pint in his local.

Now, hours on, no-one seems to notice that he is blind drunk all by himself and started drinking at such an early hour and, more importantly, no one even seems to care. That's perfectly fine with John, he'd like to be invisible just for today at least.

It isn't until Mary's shift starts at nine that his drinking marathon is put to an end. He feels her hands slide round his shoulders, pulling his torso up and hears the sound of skin un-sticking from the table. He'd intended to rest his head for a moment and ended up sprawled out across the table top asleep, he realises.

A small sigh escapes Mary's lips as she takes in the sight of him.

"Go home, John," she says and presses a ten pound note into his sweaty palm. "There's a cab waiting outside and I've called Mrs Hudson to say you'll be back shortly."

He nods shamefully, eyes glazing over with gratitude. "Thank you, Mary," he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek, then gets up and stumbles to his cab.


End file.
